Hugh,
All you have to do is Evaluate the lhs of your Set statement.
ss = {a, b, c, d, e};
dd = {1, 5, {3, 4}, 7, abc, {0.1, 0.001}, 3.1415};
Evaluate[Part[ss, 3]] = dd
1, 5, {3, 4}, 7, abc, {0.1, 0.001}, 3.1415}
c
{1, 5, {3, 4}, 7, abc, {0.1, 0.001}, 3.1415}
David Park
djmp at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/
From: Goyder Dr HGD [mailto:H.Goyder at rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk]
To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
Dear MathGroup,
I am doing something much more complicated but this trivial example
expresses my difficulty.
If I have a list of symbols and a list of data such as
ss = {a, b, c, d, e}
dd = {1, 5, {3, 4}, 7, abc, {0.1, 0.001}, 3.1415}
how do I take a symbol from the list ss and associated it with data from the
list dd?
A wrong attempt is to try
ss[[3]] = dd[[4]]
This replaces element 3 in ss with element 4 from dd.
What I need is an assignment so that, in this case, the symbol c is
associated with the data. Equivalent to writing
c = dd[[4]]
so that c could then be used in subsequent expressions and the list ss is
unchanged.
Note that this is a trivial example for pedagogic purposes - I can't do the
simple assignment in my actual case.
Thanks
Hugh Goyder